Shares a glimpse of the unspeakable pain, helplessness, frustration, and eventual healing that the author and his wife experienced since losing their son, offering comfort and connection to those walking similar paths. Original.

Whether a death is sudden or anticipated, losing a loved one shakes us to our very core, destroying our belief in a just, safe, and predictable world. Grief often changes us quickly both physically and mentally. It is like being kidnapped and suddenly transported to a foreign land without luggage, a passport, or the language to make sense of what's happening. Even if you have a road map for getting through the pain and anguish, you still have to take the trip. The purpose of this book is to help you find threads of hope that will assist your recovery and help you carry on. By sharing inspirational stories, personal experiences, and professional advice from contributors to theOpen to Hope website, we trust that you will be comforted and inspired by learning how others dealt with their losses, what they saw as roadblocks, and how they handled them as well as what it has taken for them to not only survive, but thrive. We want to help you resume leading the life that you were meant to live--a life of satisfaction and one driven by a belief in your own personal power for change.

For a parent, losing a child is the most devastating event that can occur. Most books on the subject focus on grieving and recovery, but as most parents agree, there is no recovery from such a loss. This book examines the continued love parents feel for their child and the many poignant and ingenious ways they devise to preserve the bond. Through detailed profiles of parents, Ann Finkbeiner shows how new activities and changed relationships with their spouse, friends, and other children can all help parents preserve a bond with the lost child. Refusing to fall back on pop jargon about "recovery" or to offer easy suggestions or standardized timelines, Finkbeiner's is a genuine and moving search to come to terms with loss. Her complex profiles of parents resonate with the honesty and authenticity of uncomfortable emotions expressed and, most importantly, shared with others experiencing a similar loss. Finally, each profile exemplifies the many heroic ways parents learn to live with their pain, and by so doing, honor the lives their children should have lived.

A series of whimsical essays by the New York Times "Social Q's" columnist provides modern advice on navigating today's murky moral waters, sharing recommendations for such everyday situations as texting on the bus to splitting a dinner check.

After an extended illness, Laura's daughter died at the age of twenty-nine of heart disease. The book chronicles Laura's journey from a dark place filled with desperation, grief and pain to acceptance, personal growth and peace through God's grace.

List of Tables. List of Figures. Series Editor's Foreword. Preface. Prologue. Acknowledgements. What It Means to Be a Parent After a Child Had Died. The "Mothers Now Childless" Study: Research Design and Findings. When a Child Dies, Does Grieving Ever End? One Death - A Thousand Strands of Pain: Finding the Meaning of Suffering. Bereaved Parents' Search for Understanding: The Paradox of Healing. Confronting a Spiritual Crisis: Where is God When Bad Things Happen? Confronting an Existential Crisis: Can Life Have Purpose Again? Deciding to Survive: Reaching Bottom - Climbing Up. Remembering With Love: Bereaved Parents as Biographer. Reaching Out to Help Others: Wounded Healers. Reinventing the Self: Parents Ask, "Who Are We Now?". The Legacy of Loss. References. Resources. Appendices. Index.

Inspired by the website that the New York Times hailed as "redefining mourning," this book is a fresh and irreverent examination into navigating grief and resilience in the age of social media, offering comfort and community for coping with the mess of loss through candid original essays from a variety of voices, accompanied by gorgeous two-color illustrations and wry infographics. At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it’s clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let’s face it: most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We’re awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit. Enter Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner, who can help us do better. Each having lost parents as young adults, they co-founded Modern Loss, responding to a need to change the dialogue around the messy experience of grief. Now, in this wise and often funny book, they offer the insights of the Modern Loss community to help us cry, laugh, grieve, identify, and—above all—empathize. Soffer and Birkner, along with forty guest contributors including Lucy Kalanithi, singer Amanda Palmer, and CNN’s Brian Stelter, reveal their own stories on a wide range of topics including triggers, sex, secrets, and inheritance. Accompanied by beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and witty "how to" cartoons, each contribution provides a unique perspective on loss as well as a remarkable life-affirming message. Brutally honest and inspiring, Modern Loss invites us to talk intimately and humorously about grief, helping us confront the humanity (and mortality) we all share. Beginners welcome.